DBW’s Publisher and Startup Survey Results

At this morning’s Digital Book World conference event, Mike Shatzkin shared an in-depth look at the results of a survey on publishers and startups, as well as where the future for both entities may take them.

“We’ve done a lot of programming this year on startups, and publishers working with them. We decided that it made sense to conduct a survey about their interaction,” explained Shatzkin. “We got answers from 43 publishing startups, and 25 traditional publishers in eight different countries.”

The survey respondents among the startups were highly varied, with anywhere from one to over one hundred employees, some with little to no outside funding, others with up to $2 million dollars in funding. The oldest of the startups surveyed was formed in 2002, while the newest started in 2013.

Interesting highlights from the survey revealed:

About 3/4 of the startups consider themselves to be disruptive to the publishing industry

The biggest challenge to all respondents was the frustration with the slow pace of the publishing; handling DRM was also high on the list of their challenges.

60% of the publishers stated that the people within their companies tasked with working with startups were business development people, not data or content employees.

Data was at the top of publishers’ lists of challenges, while integrating with existing systems was lowest on the list.

The top items that publishers responded they would be investing in were marketing and discovery, and metadata management.

100% of publishers responded that data insight intelligence was at the top of the list of their pain points in publishing

Publishers stated that they don’t need help from startups with content and editorial; it’s the mechanics of their ebook publishing that they need to rely on startups for.

Startups responded that more publishers ask for help with ebook files than with metadata

The startups that publishers stated that they are glad they have forged relationships with included a wide variety of startups, including NetGalley, Book Baby, HootSuite, Oyster, Goodreads, and several others. The complete report on the survey results can be found at bit.ly/DBWStartUpSurvey.